What Sort of Life to Want
Moral philosophy, at its core, is about deciding what to do next—and more broadly, what kind of life to lead and what kind of world to want.
The philosopher David Deutsch offers a thought experiment: imagine you're suddenly the last human on Earth. You'd still face the question of what sort of life to want. Deciding "I should do whatever pleases me most" wouldn't help, because what pleases you depends on your moral judgment of what constitutes a good life, not the other way around.
This reveals something crucial: our preferences aren't fixed starting points. They're shaped by our moral explanations. You can't know what you prefer to do until you've decided what sort of life you want to lead. It's no good being told to do what the laws of physics mandate—you'll do that anyway. And it's no good being told to do what you prefer—because you don't know what you prefer until you've grappled with deeper questions about how you should want the world to be.
Right and wrong, Deutsch suggests, can't be defined entirely by their utility in meeting preferences, because preferences themselves emerge from moral reasoning.